Robots & Automation in U.S. Manufacturing

Kuka Robotics put together this nifty infographic describing how manufacturing robots aren’t necessarily evil job stealin’ machines of… evil. It’s especially timely what with yesterday’s big news about a certain robotics company that wants to use robots to make domestic manufacturing more cost effective and efficient, although Rethink is tackling things much differently than big boys like Kuka.

What Kuka’s trying to sell you on here is medium to large scale industrial automation, involving robots in safety cages run by skilled operators. It’s certainly true that automation of any kind can help a business that’s making a lot of the same sort of thing, but for smaller businesses that do contract work, dedicated robots are rarely worth the massive up-front investment. [read more..]